


Beloved: A Collection

by daretogobeyondtheunknown



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-02-09 23:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12899475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daretogobeyondtheunknown/pseuds/daretogobeyondtheunknown





	1. Chapter 1

It is a metaphor.

For what, Sara has no idea but it means something and the fact that it is apparent should count for something. After all, the League is all about ancient riddles and convoluted pathways that just feel highly unnecessary.

Say it like you mean it, that’s her motto.

Of course, that motto also got her into her current predicament and honestly, Sara could do without the whole lost in the middle of some tropical forest thing with nothing but her instincts as her guide. Not that her instincts are bad, they’re actually quite impeccable, Sara just doesn’t really feel the whole bugs and no bed thing right now and she is so done with squatting in the bushes.

Bushes are overrated.

“Nyssa.”

It comes out less like a whine and more like a demand. Sara feels proud. Honestly, she has done enough whining for a dozen lifetimes and it is quite frankly tiring. Like in your bones deathly kinda tiring.

Not that Sara can attest to dying.

“Oh come on, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry okay, I won’t insult your baking skills again. So can we please just go home?”

Sara swats at the grotesquely over sized - possibly steroidal - mosquito. It splats with a satisfying squish and a fair amount of oozing blood.

Not hers, she hopes.

It is bad enough she has to sweat it out with the bugs, it is even worse to have her blood along with her comfortable amenities stolen from her.

“Oh come on, Nyssa, it wasn’t that bad!”

Bad is in reference to the child like response, as Nyssa had called it and Sara still doesn’t quite see it. Sure it wasn’t, as Laurel would say, mature but it hardly held merit to surviving this atrocity of a jungle.

Bugs just really weren’t her thing and Nyssa knew that.

“So you have one flaw, did you really need to punish me for pointing it out by exiling me here?”

It is the rustling that lets Sara know she had hit some form of some sort of nerve because Nyssa is only heard when she wants to be heard. With Sara it feels like a lot, or well more than with anyone else, and Sara kinda likes it that way.

Like it’s some sort of secret, meant just for them.

“You know I appreciate you, Nyssa, even if you can’t bake. I mean, you’re virtually perfect at everything else, so I kinda like knowing you are really human. Well, the sex is still out of this world but hey, who’s really comparing?”

If it was any other day and likely any other person, Sara knows Nyssa would never scoff or show anything to jeopardize her position. But Sara isn’t just anyone and she knows it:  knows how far she can push; knows how many buttons she can press; knows just where the Heir to the Demon is weak.

That weakness is her.

“ _Beloved_  this has nothing to do with that. You need to learn patience; how to control your wild tongue before your untamed thoughts roam free and then we are at risk.”

Sara rolls her eyes. This has nothing to do with that and Nyssa knows it.

“So the fact that I insulted your baking skills in front of your father and his council has nothing to do with this punishment?”

It is hard not to beam when Nyssa leaves her cover.

“It is not.”

“Sure it doesn’t. Sooooo… can I come home now? I’m all sweaty and gross and I would really love to just bath and crawl into bed. With you.”

Somewhere, Sara is sure Laurel is scolding her for the way her body language speaks and her message is blatantly obvious. How her parents ever survived their endless bickering and differences of -  _strong -_ opinions, Sara will never know.

“If you repeat such mistakes in the future- _”_

“I won’t.”

She probably will and Nyssa probably knows that too. But her ability to deny Sara is weak and her willingness to submit is perhaps a little too terrifying. It implies so many spoken and unspoken things and Sara isn’t sure she is ready for half of them.

But something about Nyssa makes her want to be; be ready, that is. To be someone who offers support and lifts up rather than tears down. To be not a crutch but an equal who can hold her own, who can be an asset in battle rather than a liability. To be able to protect Nyssa as only she can.

“I swear, you will be my end, _Habibti.”_

As Sara plants her lips against Nyssa’s, melting into their texture and oozing affection, she wonders if Nyssa knows she feels the same.

Because everything about this will be her undoing and Sara wouldn’t have it any other way.


	2. In Resurrection; What Have We Become?

Somewhere between resurrection and jumping timelines, emotions feel foggy. Sara can hardly recall what it feels like to love, to have been loved and to desire love. Because aside from the overwhelming lust for blood, it all feels equal.

To Sara, love feels like a ruse.

It preys on weakness - on a narrative the masses have happily bought. It distracts from the root causes and it equips generations to displace logic and allow emotions to lead them down whimsical paths.

_Follow your heart_.  _It will never lead you astray._

Tell that to the woman who followed love off a bridge.

“Sara?”

Sara blinks.

The team is ready, willing to charge into a battle that is not theirs to fight. And for what?

Swords clang in the distance.

For love. For affection. For loyalty. Because Sara rushed on ahead, off course and towards an altercation that has nothing to do with her team, nothing to do with ripples in timelines and certainly nothing that Gideon would recommend.

She is sensible or at least sensible when it comes to some things. The timeline is one and there is no place for tears and a wandering heart.

That remains buried in the coffin of her first death.

“We let them be.”

Objections linger on the tips of tongues and Sara wonders if maybe they know. If maybe they can see it in the way Sara pretends she can’t feel it. Because even though there are no place for tears and in her chest is nothing but emptiness, it still aches, if only just a little.

But Sara will not be played. Not for love. Not for anyone.

And so they leave, returning to the Waverider in silence. Sara retreats to her cabin after a quick debriefing, ensuring the team has duties and purpose and will not waste the precious new found time. Inside it is dark.

Sara doesn’t cry - she doesn’t feel she ever will - but she wallows and her mind takes a trip down a rocky edge and into a turbulent ocean. It isn’t until dinner and a soft knock on her door that Sara takes air.

No one ever said she could drown on solid land.

*

No one speaks.

Or at least they do, however the big elephant in the room remains unnamed and Sara feels her shoulders ease ever so. She enjoys her team, sees them as the family she lost twice, and it has been so long since she has felt so very out of place.

Gideon can’t make hide nor tails of this newfound silence in a group of misfits with jagged edges, cutting tongues and chainsaw like precision.

Sara wonders if silence encompassed the battlefield and if maybe, just maybe,  _she_  didn’t make it.

*

“Was that her?”

Sara looks up from the charts in bewilderment. Maybe it’s the voice or it’s the question but whatever it is Sara certainly does not expect it.

“You’re going to have to be more elaborate. Last I knew, mind reading wasn’t really my forte.”

But maybe it is and Sara just really doesn’t want to acknowledge it, to acknowledge that  _she_  has been stuck on her mind. Like a reoccurring dream that bleeds into her waking hours.

_“Beloved, ignorance suits you not.”_

The smell of the earth and incense bleed into her sentience and with eyes shut tight, Sara yearns for tears. Perhaps then, drowning in her own sorrows, would she be able to feel some sense of reprieve, to be free of these invisible chains of a state Sara refuses to define as love.

“The one you cry for in your sleep.”

Because love is the ruse Sara cannot afford to be affixed to.

_“If you love me, you will leave this place far behind and live a life unburdened by your past.”_

Someone where in the haze of timelines and bloodlust Sara feels the tendrils of a promise wrapped in the most delirious of states.

“I don’t cry. Not anymore.”

But it is certainly not love and in the vacancy of her chest, it certainly does not last.


End file.
